Nyctophobia (28 page)

I had a different theory; that something had terrified her and she had run out into the night, where she had met with an accident. I walked the roads around the house, checking all of the goat-paths, the sudden drops and gullies, but found no sign of her.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had somehow caused her death, that if she had not come to the house that night and insisted on contacting the Condemaines, she would still be alive.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The Acceptance

I
T WAS SHOCKING
how quickly everyone came to accept that she was gone. The townsfolk had regarded her as imperious and something of an annoyance, but Eduardo felt the loss in his till receipts, and Lola crossed herself whenever Celestia’s name was mentioned.

Acceptance. It’s a hard state to achieve, but if the residents of Gaucia managed it, the house made it easier for me. If I didn’t fully understand the forces at work in Hyperion, I at least came to terms with them.

As far as I was concerned, there was nothing left to discover. I didn’t need to decipher any more of the monograph to understand what Francesco Condemaine had done. He had built a
camera obscura
and mapped the heavens, using the clocks to calculate the most propitious time for his society and its rituals. He had performed them, either alone or with his acolytes, and with the protection of his family set firmly in place he went off to fight for the British. But his plan failed… he was killed in action, setting off a chain of terrible tragedies. As a result, the Condemaines became victims of an experiment gone wrong, and lived on in the rooms mirroring the ones they had inhabited in life.

Why did we always find so many reasons not to believe? Why could we not learn to accept things for what they were? The only obstacle to my happiness lay in my refusal to admit that the world held unfathomable mysteries.

I went to find Rosita.

The housekeeper was scrubbing down the cooker, where I had made a mess serving up the previous night’s meal. ‘It’s alright, Rosita,’ I told her, ‘I understand now. About the house. Remember you said what a happy place it has always been?’

‘Yes, Senora.’

‘I know why. Your employers are still here with us, in those other rooms we don’t use.’

She did not look up, but scrubbed hard at a spot on the enamel. ‘My employers are all dead.’

‘Do you know what I believe? That Francesco Condemaine conducted a ritual to ensure that his family’s spirits could live on here. Even though it meant that they would have to remain in darkness.’

Rosita stopped working and looked at me. ‘No, Senora. That is what the women of Gaucia believe. It is not what I know to be true.’

‘But I’ve seen them, and I fought against believing in them, don’t you see? If I don’t let them out, if I just keep them where they belong, then there’s nothing they can do, and there can only be happiness here. That’s why Elena Condemaine appeared to me, to let me see the truth.’

‘The house puts things right,’ said Rosita stubbornly, scrubbing away once more. ‘It can only help those who stay in the light.’

‘Yes, and that’s why we need the clocks, isn’t it, to work out where the stars are and to warn us about the hours of darkness. You always knew that the Condemaines were still here – you never go in the other rooms.’

‘You are angry with me.’

‘No, of course I’m not angry with you. I just need to understand the rules by which I’m meant to live. Rosita, I tried to kill myself in London, I tried because I was so desperately unhappy, and this house has given me everything. But it also terrified me because I didn’t understand! Please, if you have it within your power to help me, do so now!’

‘Then you must know that there are no ghosts here,’ said Rosita, her face grimly set. ‘I’m an old woman, my time has passed. There is no happiness without loss. And there is nothing I can do to change things.’

‘I’m not asking you to change anything, just to acknowledge it! If I have that, then none of this is in my head. Knowing that I’m sane will allow me to cope with almost anything else.’

‘But the house –’

I raised my hand. I needed her to understand how I felt. ‘No more. The house has made a believer of me. Do you know how momentous that is? To realise that there’s more to the world than we ever dreamed? All my life I’ve felt shut outside, lost somehow, as if I was just looking in on other people’s lives, missing some kind of – survival map – that they were in possession of and I had never been given, and for the first time I’ve been granted access to their world. I can live like this, with them, and still be happy. Of course I won’t say anything to Mateo, or to Bobbie, they needn’t have to suffer what I’ve been through. I can even protect them in the future. Everything is going to be fine from now on, you wait and see. I feel truly well again, for the first time in years.’

I saw the doubt in Rosita’s eyes, watched as she almost spoke but changed her mind, but it didn’t matter whether or not she believed me. I had discovered a kind of faith, and it was all I needed to put my mind at rest.

I simply had to follow the rules of Hyperion. And by taking this course, I ignored all the warning signs.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The Confession

O
F COURSE
M
ATEO
returned laden with chocolates and gifts, a silver Tiffany bracelet for me, a rather creepy gothic doll for Bobbie, and a promise for both of us; that he only had to make one more trip before passing over the international side of the business to one of his colleagues. He would exclusively handle the exportation of Riojas and sherries within the EU. It meant that his longest trips would now be the overnights to Madrid or Jerez, and the rest of the time he would be home with us. There would be no more empty nights filled with wild imaginings. Our world would slowly shift back into balance once more.

I set aside the study of Hyperion House telling myself that I would return to it, but I wasn’t so sure that I could. The only person who seemed genuinely disappointed by my abandonment of the project was Jordi.

‘I couldn’t see any point in continuing it,’ I said. ‘There are too many other things taking up my time.’

‘I don’t like to see people waste their energy,’ he replied, clearly annoyed with me. ‘Remember what Celestia always used to say about people who came here with good intentions, and how they ended up drinking and reading?’

‘Has nobody heard from her?’ I asked, remembering that I had to have seen her after everyone else.

‘Not a thing,’ said Jordi. ‘Eduardo has the keys to her house, and has been over there to check on it several times, but it is empty. He says some of her things are missing, and her handbag and purse, so the thinking is that she went to England to see friends and didn’t tell anyone. She’d done it before.’

I was still sure that she had left at the height of the storm, and had suffered some kind of an accident, but it seemed utterly bizarre that there was no trace of her. She’d told me she had no surviving relatives in England, and some years before had signed over her power of attorney to her neighbour. I didn’t remember seeing her purse or her handbag, and it seemed more likely that he had nipped in and stolen them. I imagined he and his family were hoping that everyone would quietly forget about her. But an Englishwoman abroad, albeit one as vague and hippyish as Celestia, surely couldn’t vanish without investigation?

‘I’m certain she’ll reappear in the square any day now,’ said Jordi, uncertainly. ‘I like her. I like you, and it seems a shame that you’re going to give up the book. You were so excited about it.’

‘What about you?’ I said defensively. ‘You’re the custodian of a library nobody ever uses. Why would you stay here?’

‘I’m not,’ he replied. ‘I’ve been offered a job as an archivist in Cadiz.’

‘Are you going to take it?’

‘I think I will, now.’ When he said this, I realised something that should have been blindingly obvious, that he had actually been holding out some hope for the two of us.

‘I think that’s a good idea,’ I said stiffly. ‘You’ll be able to make something of yourself.’

‘Very well. I have something for you.’ He dug in the drawer of his desk and pulled out an envelope. ‘I thought it might be useful for your book, but you won’t need it now.’

‘What is it?’ I asked, accepting the gift.

‘I took the shelves down to clean them and found a letter that must have fallen from your monograph. I made a translation of it for you. I think you should still read it.’

I didn’t like to tell him that I could have easily run it through a translation app, so I thanked him and took my leave. As I walked away, I glanced back and saw him standing at the library door, pretending not to watch me go. When he saw me looking he stepped swiftly back inside and was lost in the shadows.

A
S
M
ATEO PREPARED
to start his new domestic-trip-only schedule, I reached a decision. Toward the end of October, I sat with my husband in the glass atrium and we talked until late into the velvet night, beneath a star-spattered sky.

I told him the truth about me; that it was unlikely that I would ever be able to have a child, but that there were methods we might try. I talked about my father, how I had been forced to lock my bedroom door against him at night, and why I had tried to ‘make myself ugly’ as Anne had euphemistically described my cutting and anorexia. I made no excuses for my plunge into the hedonistic lifestyle that had finally resulted in my unwanted pregnancy. I held nothing back. Nothing at all.

At the end of this protracted bout in the confessional booth, Mateo told me that he had definitely suspected something along these lines, and that yes he carried his Catholic baggage, but it made no difference to how he felt about me. I was the love of his life and would always remain so, and we would try to have children of our own, but if we failed that didn’t matter either because there was wonderful Bobbie, who if truth be told, had come to love me as much as she did her natural mother.

It felt as if he was telling me what I wanted to hear, as if it was all too good to be true. But that night, as we made love, I realised that he meant every word.

As I had decided for now that I would not continue with the book, which would only concentrate interest on a house we both wished to keep private, I decided to take over Mateo’s accounts. I sent away for a Sage Accounting software package, and taught myself how to use it. The Apple laptop proved irreparable, but Mateo bought me another and I set to work. Rosita seemed pleased that I had decided to give up the idea of gainful employment, as if it was not the sort of thing a lady of Hyperion House should ever consider. She offered to teach me the principles of rustic Spanish cookery by way of compensation, and dear God, I accepted. Although I was still convinced that it was basically about sticking things in tomato sauce.

CHAPTER FORTY

The Children

I
HAD BROUGHT
up the
bonheur du jour
writing desk and made it my own, and put Jordi’s envelope in a drawer, fully intending not to bother with it. Meanwhile, I concentrated on Mateo’s accounts. He was hopeless at keeping receipts, and some of the discrepancies in his files were impossible to reconcile. For a start I could find no records of his recent flights to London, Madrid or JFK, even though he said he had booked the trips online and printed out receipts. Worse was Mateo’s habit of keeping unopened mail, which he told me he’d intended to get around to but had somehow forgotten about. A stack of it had mounted up and I hardly knew how to begin to sort out the bills and queries, most of which had now become urgent.

After working my way through the pile for a day, I took a break and decided to open the envelope Jordi had given me. The letter had been chewed by mice and soaked in some kind of brown liquid, but he had included a translation on a fresh sheet. Attached to it was a note.

I thought you should have this. I think it must have fallen from the part of the monograph that had come loose from its binding. It’s from Amancio Lueches to his wife Nina and is dated February 2009, six months before he was removed from Hyperion House to the Santa Theresa hospital. I couldn’t read all of it, as his handwriting was very hard to decipher and the paper is badly damaged, but I have copied out the passages that I thought might be relevant to your studies. Your friend, Jordi.

I folded the translation flat on the desk and began to read.

Marcos Condemaine was, of course, a fool. Foolish to have supported the Republicans and to have defied the Movimiento Nacionale. The Civil War had its deepest roots in the battle of ownership for the land, so what did he, a Republican landowner, expect would happen? If it had not been for my government connections we would never have returned the house to its original family! And please by God’s will we will live in it until we die, and that will be the end of us.

But what a strange dwelling Francesco built for his timid little Elena. A home without darkness! An unparalleled achievement! Of course, bricks and wood cannot build happiness by themselves, and I am sure Francesco filled Hyperion House with the power of God’s almighty love.

Of course there was a price to pay for so much happiness. For you know there must be harmonious balance in all things. There can be no happiness without loss.

No happiness without loss. The phrase resonated.

Francesco conducted a rite of consecration on the darkened grounds behind the house where no shaft of sunlight would ever touch. It was said that by the time he finished, the soil was so soaked in blood that no blade of grass could ever take root on it.

Acts that seem necessary to one generation appear barbarous to the next, but there is little justification for my ancestor’s behaviour. When the people of Gaucia discovered what had happened, did they try to have him arrested and tried? Of course not! They bowed low as the landowner passed by in his carriage, averting their eyes, and muttered darkly to themselves behind closed shutters about revenge.